[TV] Deep Space 9

[Stormspark]

Can't find a thread about this series, but I've just begun re-watching it again for the first time in a few years, and it's amazing at how many parallels there are in it to events happening today. It was REALLY ahead of its time. Anyone that hasn't seen it definitely needs to, it's more relevant today than it was when it was made.

Also a fun bit of trivia. Richard Dean Anderson was considered for the part of Benjamin Sisko. That would've been really interesting to see. Obviously DS9 would've been a VERY different show (and who knows what SG-1 would've been like)...the Sisko we know was defined very strongly by Avery Brooks, and a Sisko played by RDA would've been a completely different character. It would be interesting to see RDA's Sisko in another universe though, and see what the show would've been like.

[yetgdhfgh]

DS-9 is my second fave Star Trek series after Next Gen

I loved the war against the Dominion and Sisko was fucking badass!

[Stormspark]

That show touched on a LOT of stuff that is really coming to the forefront now. Terrorism vs Freedom Fighters. Overreach of government powers in the name of "security". It's crazy how relevant it is today.

Look at all the security theater today, airports especially...then go back and watch the 2-parter from season 4. Homefront/Paradise Lost. It floored me.

[the game]

I prefer Enterprise. The characters and the story lines seemed so much more relate able. Voyager is next in line and then TNG. DS9 is good but just not my favorite.

[Arrowstormen]

Should maybe check it out someday, seems like it's "Star Trek taking heavy cues from Babylon 5".

[Stormspark]

Should maybe check it out someday, seems like it's "Star Trek taking heavy cues from Babylon 5".

It's actually an urban legend that DS9 "stole" anything from B5. It was already in development before B5 was pitched to Paramount. Both shows influenced each other over their run though, and they diverged quite a bit by the end.

It's a more down to earth presentation of the Star Trek universe, without Roddenberry's excessive idealism. It had a great deal of reality injected into it.

[Moozart]

I was one of those few people that actually liked Voyager

[yetgdhfgh]

I was one of those few people that actually liked Voyager

I liked voyager too and i dont see why the hate it gets just like Enterprise but i guess i see TV as entertainment and not some fucking lifestyle where if something isnt totally perfect and fits in with the 'trekkie' way of seeing things then its shit.

[the game]

I was one of those few people that actually liked Voyager

I enjoyed voyager. It was actually my first major introduction to star trek. I went back and watched TNG after I had watched voyager.

[Hammerfest]

DS9 is my all-time favorite Star Trek show. It was more original and more entertaining than any other.

[Stormspark]

I liked voyager too and i dont see why the hate it gets just like Enterprise but i guess i see TV as entertainment and not some fucking lifestyle where if something isnt totally perfect and fits in with the 'trekkie' way of seeing things then its shit.

The problem with Voyager was bad writing. The characters acted totally differently depending on the writer and that's a bad thing. Some writers were better than others. In the later seasons the actors (especially Kate Mulgrew) started outright demanding more control over their characters, and things significantly improved.

The other issue it had was basically pressing the reset button every single episode. I'm not even talking about plot related resets (Year of Hell was actually a good one), just where a bunch of stuff happens to the ship and it's immediately fine again next episode. Nothing that happened to the ship ever had any consequence beyond the episode it was in, and for a ship that's supposedly stranded with a 70 year journey home, that's not right. The other issue was being low on power and yet still running the holodecks, resulting in absolutely ridiculous handwaves that "oh the holodeck power source isn't compatible with any other systems" (which directly contradicted TNG).

Basically...bad writing, and NO overall direction, with writers basically throwing crap and the wall and seeing what stuck.

[the game]

DS9 is my all-time favorite Star Trek show. It was more original and more entertaining than any other.

You thought DS9 was more original than Enterprise?

[MrPaladinGuy]

ToS - can't bring myself to watch something that old and campy, yet.

TNG - Obviously superb.

Deep Space 9 - Obviously and surprisingly superb.

Voyager - Took a while to warm up to, its great after that, but I had issues with Kate Mulgrew's acting in some episodes.

Enterprise - Surprisingly good, really enjoyed the theme song before it was sped up in the later seasons. We actually got moving stuff on monitors that look like leftovers from a pizza joint. I expected more from the series, for the time it took place in it was great, except for the whole time travel nonsense, but I realize they had to do something.

I'm also part of the minority that really enjoyed the first ST movie, most of the movie was about getting you prepared for the scale of just how large that energy cloud/field was (basically the diameter of our solar system) and letting the sense of awe overcome you, and seeing ST with a large budget.

[Stormspark]

Voyager - Took a while to warm up to, its great after that, but I had issues with Kate Mulgrew's acting in some episodes.

That actually wasn't the issue. Kate is a great actress. The issue was the writing as I pointed out above. Even the best actor can only do so much when they are given a bad script. This was remediated in later seasons once she started demanding more control over her character (basically vetoing the writers - saying Janeway would never do that, take that out).

[yetgdhfgh]

The problem with Voyager was bad writing. The characters acted totally differently depending on the writer and that's a bad thing. Some writers were better than others. In the later seasons the actors (especially Kate Mulgrew) started outright demanding more control over their characters, and things significantly improved.

The other issue it had was basically pressing the reset button every single episode. I'm not even talking about plot related resets (Year of Hell was actually a good one), just where a bunch of stuff happens to the ship and it's immediately fine again next episode. Nothing that happened to the ship ever had any consequence beyond the episode it was in, and for a ship that's supposedly stranded with a 70 year journey home, that's not right. The other issue was being low on power and yet still running the holodecks, resulting in absolutely ridiculous handwaves that "oh the holodeck power source isn't compatible with any other systems" (which directly contradicted TNG).

Basically...bad writing, and NO overall direction, with writers basically throwing crap and the wall and seeing what stuck.

hey Iam a Doctor Who fan so iam used to all that!

[Val the Moofia Boss]

DS9 stands in an unusual space in the Star Trek franchise; the series' greatest strength lies in it's continuous story as opposed to the episodic story telling that Star Trek is greatest at, while at it's weakest when being a straight up, episodic Star Trek series. For all intensive purposes, all Star Trek series are the same: The crew encounters a strange phenomena or crisis of the week, technobabble is laid out detailing a fanciful way of dealing with it in such a way that philosophy and political commentary can overlaid onto it, and then everything is alright for our crew by the next episode, barring cast changes or a series finale. DS9 being set on a space station is a cosmetic change; the stories simply come to or take place near DS9 instead of the Enterprise simply showing up at wherever the plot is (ironically, this actually works in DS9's favor, as we get to become intimately familiar with the Bajoran sector, while the world of all the other Star Trek series feel like a nebulous collection of locations within some incomprehensibly vast area of space). Nevertheless, we overlook DS9's episodic stories because many of those stories are in fact continuations of ideas from TNG and TOS episodes (ie, the Maquis, the eugenics taboo, the Breen, the Cardassians, and so forth) while also expanding upon those same ideas. Voyager and Enterprise use an episodic formula that supposedly uses new races and plots (that was the whole point of being set in a different quadrant/era, cutoff from the familiar universe we know), but it becomes glaringly obvious that they are simply rehashing old ideas we've already seen before (the races, worlds, and stories of the Delta quadrant and pre-Federation-Era are simply variations or mishmashes of what we have already seen, which was among the biggest flaws of those series). By simply using the same ideas in the first place, we are more likely to accept variations on the same story as opposed to calling out the writers for plagiarizing themselves. In other words: if The Original Series created the episodic Star Trek structure, then it was The Next Generation which refined it. The Star Trek series that come after - for the most part - rehash the ideas and stories of TOS and TNG, but since Deep Space Nine is set in the same universe as TOS and TNG, it can reuse those same ideas and stories as a base without having to feel like a cheap knock off. This allows us as the audience to instead think about the new take of the same idea as opposed to comparing it to an old one.

The real draw of DS9 is ofcourse, it's overarching story. While TOS and TNG sometimes revisited events from past episodes, the stories were for the most part independent from each other. A person who has never seen Star Trek before can start with almost any episode of the series without missing anything, since the status quo of the narrative remains consistent throughout. DS9 instead treats it's major events with continuity; where the success or failure of a covert mission in Dominion space could impact the war and the status of various worlds and characters for the remainder of the series. In TOS and TNG, the takeover of the Enterprise is treated as no big deal; it's taken back by the end of the episode and no one is fired for incompetence, and the Federation isn't even remotely concerned. In DS9, when the Defiance is destroyed, the DS9 crew have now lost a MAJOR advantage in their struggle, and suddenly they lose several options when dealing with the problem of the week. When the station itself is captured, the entire narrative has been altered, with characters spread throughout the galaxy and the Federation is on the cusp of collapse. Now, choices made previous during the series may or may not come back to either help or harm our heroes: they need help, depending on whom they assisted or favored in the past will determine who will aid them now. Policies made in the past may set a precedent going forward as how to deal with future problems, which may be twisted for rather dubious purposes. The most obvious benefit from this narrative structure, is ofcourse being able to have series wide character arcs (how O'Brien copes as a husband during the war, Kira being torn between her old rebellion friends or the Federation, Siskos increasingly desperate decision making) as opposed to character arcs that exist only in their own bubbles. Having characters cross over from The Next Generation to DS9 reinforced the feeling that DS9 took place in an interconnected world that was actually ongoing as opposed to a string of events taking place at unrelated locations.

Besides that, there's not much else to say. The music isn't anything to write home about, the set design is an improvement over TNG's but still looks like a made-for-TV-production (excusable, considering that they are working with a pretty standard TV budget), technobabble is only marginally more consistent (sure would have been nice to have used those TR-116's during the war... you know, the rifles that BEAM/TELEPORT BULLETS INTO YOUR BRAIN that the Federation developed? Pretty sure if the Federation refined that tech (both for infantry and space warfare), the war would've ended a year earlier. The typical Star Trek problems. The characters are on par with TNG's (though the casts of TOS and TNG will always remain the most iconic for being the codifier for Star Trek). Ultimately, the series would up as a 8/10 (very good) in my book. Definitely worth rewatching every five or six years.

[Drakain]

DS9 is my favorite Star Trek show. It was less preachy than TNG, and the characters were more interesting and compelling to me (except for Data. No one is better than Data.)

[Ilikegreenfire]

Ds9 is my favorite trek by far, tng is great as well but Ds9s metaplot made it the best imo. Tos tng voy are all about exploratory vessels flying around and visiting planets, they had some meta plots.but largely atleast imo felt seperate from the galexy as a whole.

I mean look at voy, separated from the federation but evey new episode it looks like it came out of a federation drydock. That ship went through some shit, it should have showed from episode to episode, yet it looks like a standard right out of the factory model when it comes back 5 or what ever years later.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

ToS - can't bring myself to watch something that old and campy, yet.

TNG - Obviously superb.

Deep Space 9 - Obviously and surprisingly superb.

Voyager - Took a while to warm up to, its great after that, but I had issues with Kate Mulgrew's acting in some episodes.

Enterprise - Surprisingly good, really enjoyed the theme song before it was sped up in the later seasons. We actually got moving stuff on monitors that look like leftovers from a pizza joint. I expected more from the series, for the time it took place in it was great, except for the whole time travel nonsense, but I realize they had to do something.

I'm also part of the minority that really enjoyed the first ST movie, most of the movie was about getting you prepared for the scale of just how large that energy cloud/field was (basically the diameter of our solar system) and letting the sense of awe overcome you, and seeing ST with a large budget.

Hm, well in that case...

ToS: The Prototype Star Trek series. Flawed, but definitely worth watching.
TNG: The definitive Star Trek series. Must watch.
DS9: The most unique Star Trek series, took a risk which paid off. Definitely worth watching.
Voy: A straight up rehash of TNG, with a few novel elements. Optional.
Ent: I'm not going to be one of those naysayers who say that ENT is trash (because I did enjoy it... at times), but I do agree that is objectively the worst Star Trek series.
Movies: Let's be honest here, most of the movies are trash: they are subpar B-movies at best, and most of them aren't even Star Trek in tone anyways. The few standouts are: 2, 4, and First Contact.

[minteK917]

I prefer Enterprise. The characters and the story lines seemed so much more relate able.

Has to be trolling. Enterprise has some of the most unrelatable characters. Some downright insulting in many episodes. Some of the most inhuman take on the prime directive that makes even TNG season 1 and 2 laugh.